Cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and the long-term value of investing in it, continues to be a matter of heated debate among those interested in such things. Right now, it's seeing a definite good phase, and it can be at the very least interesting to take a look at how it's fared as a straightforward investment over the last ten years compared to big, successful publicly traded companies. One Reddit user did that, crunching the numbers and coming up with some interesting results.
According to those numbers, a thousand dollar investment in Bitcoin in 2009 (not quite ten years ago, but close enough to a decade for purposes of illustration) would be worth $160 million worth of bitcoins as of the end of October of this year. Now, take a look at what a similar investment in some big, successful companies would have yielded over the course of a decade:
Netflix – $51,966
Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
Amazon – $12,398
Apple – $6,228
Starbucks – $4,687
Nike – $3,319
Mike Lawrie/Getty Images
Alphabet (Google) – $2,922
Disney – $2,824
McDonald's – $2,793
PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images
Mylan – $2,374
Microsoft – $2,260
FedEx – $2,185
Wal-Mart – $1,931
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Coca-Cola – $1489
Pfizer – $1,425
General Electric – $490
As you can see, even the most profitable of those hypothetical investments – Netflix – holds a candle to Bitcoin in terms of the value of the return. Of course, what these figures don't show you is the steep drops in value that have also happened over the course of the history of the cryptocurrency, and that are in fact still possible. Compared to investments in relatively stable, safe companies like the ones in the above list, it figures that taking a risk on something like Bitcoin would offer a sizable potential reward. But it's still interesting to consider how much it would have paid to be a loyal Bitcoin investor from the beginning – especially when compared to other lucrative investments over the course of the last decade.
